Sunday

H got worse, not better, as his residual cold took over on top of the gastro. He may or may not have still been sick, but he was certainly coughing until he puked, so we decided to avoid aggravating the situation by feeding him. That might have led to him being sick and whiny for longer, who knows. Anyway, he was very quiet and floppy and whingey and just wanted to sleep. K took advantage of his absence to do lots of crafty stuff. She’s also gotten really interested in Africa lately, so I suggested that we could look for some books at the library, and she wants me to do some googling to find stuff she might like. She found a slightly curved stick, and started out fishing in the ditch out the front with a length of wool tied to one end, then turned it into a bow (with my help) and killed seven panthers and eight bears and nine wolves, oh my! I am detecting the influence of a certain famous pioneer girl’s stories, here. Oh, and we had a long conversation about how the earth was formed, how life started, and evolution.

Monday

I started feeling the collywobbles at bedtime on Sunday, so woke up a few times to puke during the night (luckily H was sleeping with Mr Bat). Mr Bat couldn’t sleep, due to indigestion, nausea, and fluey aches and pains, and finally got up in the middle of the night to shower and throw up. That was the only time he did, lucky bastard. He was somewhat less fragile than I was for the rest of the day, so took K out to HIP in the morning and sat in a corner muttering, Unclean, unclean; while H and I stayed at home and slept. In the afternoon K mostly watched movies, although at one point all three of us afflicted people were asleep so I don’t know what she was doing then. She also used the direct dial on the phone to call her Grandmoogi and complain that everybody except her was sick, heh.

Tuesday

Saw us generally well again. H had lost that god-awful whinge, at last! He was still pretty fragile, though, and I had to spend entirely too much time trying to convince him to stay inside and nurse his sniffles instead of following his intrepid and much less sick sister around in the cold. Apart frm that, and washing loads and loads of puked-on towels and bedding, it was another quiet day of movies and stuff wot I don’t remember because I have a brain like a thing with holes in it. Mr Bat went out for a few hours to Kingston to pick up my shoes and do some work, and the smalls largely entertained themselves for a few hours, which was nice as it allowed me to veg and finish recovering. But by the evening K was getting REALLY over being largely ignored for days and was acting out more and more.

Wednesday

I decided we really needed to get connected and engaged with each other again, so K and I made A PlanTM in the morning. She drew lines to make squares on a page of her scrapbook, and in the squares we wrote down ideas for things we could do. So whenever she got bored, she just needed to consult The PlanTM, and lo! ideas would be had. And it worked for me because writing down The PlanTM was like making an appointment, which meant that when she asked me to do such-and-such I was already mentally prepared to do it instead of retreat into my book like I did yesterday. So, the things we crossed off were: “cleaning the kitchen” (except Mr Bat did that, not us at all), “Kitchen Science“, “cuddles”, “Star Wars“, “snow (if there is any)”, “leadlight”, “books”, and “clean bedroom”. We didn’t cross off “Africa” today because we didn’t do anything towards it together, but I’ve been looking for books in the library catalogue and would have requested some if that function was actually working this evening…

For Kitchen Science, we originally wanted to do the surface tension experiment with milk, food colouring and dishwashing liquid, except we didn’t have any food colouring. So we cheated and did the mould experiment instead (not hard, in our kitchen!). They now have a jar each with some manky apple in it, and we shall see what happens – yummo! As well as Star Wars, which H thought was too scary, they watched The Muppet Movie. There wasn’t any snow, although we spent a fair bit of time looking out the weather window at the mountains, speculating about whether it was snow or rain coming, and talking about what the weather report means about “snow down to 1100m”. For the leadlighting, I set them both up with one of the plastic suncatcher kits which have been in the cupboard for years, altho H decided he didn’t want to do his crocodile so I put it back again. K’s became a very frustrating experience as it turned out that the backing tray wasn’t level, and by the time she’d finished carefully filling out each section with separate colours, the butterfly frame was sitting on top of the pieces and we had to start again…then again…then finally I just shovelled them all in and stuck it in the oven because OMGthefrustration! So it is extremely multicoloured, but she still likes it. We decided next time, we could glue the frame onto the alfoil and see if that works better. For books, we read a few old favourites, also Everyone Loves the Moon which goes through the phases of the moon, and Discovering Electricity, which is another one in her collection of vintage beginning science books (apparently electricity makes your phonograph play your records) but which we hadn’t read yet. And finally, Mr Bat and K laboriously cleaned the absolute disaster of the children’s bedroom, while H refused to help and had to be bribed with and threatened with the refusal of marshmallows. After the mushmelons it was supposed to be stories and songs, but so far it’s been two hours, K has had chapters of Farmer Boy and H has had stories, and they are both still wide awake at 10pm, curses… But I’ve been awake since four am, so I’m going to bed anyway, dammit.

Amidst all that, I also inventoried the pantry and fridge, wrote a meal plan and a shopping list, and went to the supermarket. I think I made up for the last few days of nothing, really.